So, for the past year I have essentially stopped online gaming and instead of just getting rid of XBL all together I downgraded to Silver since its free and I only used XBL to talk to friends over private and party chat while we played various different singleplayer games. It was nice for a while, but now for some reason I cant do private chat anymore, I'm still a silver membership but it shows my friends list as having 0 people (I had 80 something before) and when I tried to re-add the people I talked to the most I cant send a friend request or a message, it just says "Message cannot be sent" :/

This has persisted for a few days now and I'm wondering if anyother silver users out there have the same problem? Did Microsoft just decide that you have to pay just to private chat or even have a friends list now? Maybe it's just me? thanks in advance.

I'm pretty sure Xbox Live removed that feature from Silver.

SON OF A-!!!! I knew thats what was likely the case, I guess I need to go online/stay in the XBL loop a little more well, Microsoft wins this round, I'll buy a 12 month card and after that runs out I'm done since I'll either be in the military or college by then. Unfortunate you now have to pay the full price of all the XBL features even if all you want to do it private chat ONE person. Its like all the Microsoft pigs in suits gathered around a big table in their "league of evil" headquarters and thought to themselves: "whats something else we can take away from silver users?" and then one of their goons says: "How about private chat? That way they have to pay just to talk!" obviously everyone then agreed, the goon got a promotion, and all those greedy bastards lived happily ever after while Silver users now have to pay to upgrade to Gold just so they can do more than scroll through advertisments on their dashboard.

Ok, so maybe its not THAT big of a deal and its probably old news but its new to me and I daresay I am thouroughly dissapointed :dry: a lot of screwing over of customers going on with corporations these days...or maybe its always been happening I just notice it more now, either way not cool MS....not cool.... :stare:

Edit: I mean, I can always talk to people over the phone or Facebook chat or something when I play if I absolutely have to but I just figured, well, I dont know, maybe since I payed money and bought one of their headsets that maybe they could let me use it? Or maybe I'm just asking too much...or maybe I'm just really tired and I seem to keep rambling on, probably a mix of both

Strangely enough, it's possible to send messages from a silver account using Games for Windows LIVE, but not Xbox LIVE.